


I Swear That I'm Trying

by whatsanapocalae



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Anger, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Self Confidence Issues, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 04:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16654375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: This was supposed to be smut but I'm really sick and it turned into a stream of consciousness angst thing and I'm sorry. Sebastian and Stefano discuss feelings and the past and what they're going to do about the future.here's a song (warning for female nudity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oO-b8GzMkc&index=126&list=PL0PN_zXVCB6gW0qjQNB1v04io-HTgeudc





	I Swear That I'm Trying

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bad ear infection and I'm having a really hard time focusing on anything, so I'm sorry if none of this makes sense. "Mio Caro" means "My darling"

He woke to soft fingers tracing his ribs, so gentle that it sent a shiver through him, making him think of that singing ghost whose hands were so soft and kind as she sent him into the worst recesses of his own mind. These fingers were warm though and there was no music playing. He could feel warm breaths against his ear.

He shuddered, turning, and the fingers stopped, stuck in place, before receding. Sebastian looked half awake himself, his face lax and his eyelids lowered, but he was awake enough to know that such touches may not have been acceptable. There was a light blush on his cheeks, as if he were embarrassed for being caught. 

Stefano took his hands though, placed them back on his ribs, and exhaled. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I won’t tell anyone.”

Sebastian nuzzled his head further into the pillow, hiding his face. “It’s not that.”

Stefano kept his hands still, kept them holding Sebastian’s hands against him. His hands were so cold and Sebastian’s were so warm. He suddenly realized that all of him was cold in comparison, all but where Sebastian was touching. He closed his eye. 

He wasn’t sure why Sebastian was ashamed of this. Every time he’d reached for Stefano, something had held him back. He wondered if it was because of Myra. They’d run into his wife a few times and Stefano wondered if Sebastian wanted her again, if his love for her was stronger than his will to survive, if he was still loyal to the woman who had willingly become a monster. He knew the answer to that though. Of course. Sebastian was loyal to a fault. Sebastian only needed him for as long as they were in Union. Once they had Lily he would be an enemy once more. But the touches, right now, were nice. 

“Do you even want this?”

His eye snapped open, staring at Sebastian, at the way the blush had slowly crept to his ears. His eyes were on Stefano’s lips, as if he couldn’t bear eye contact, which Stefano was fine with, was used to, but not from Sebastian. People didn’t know where to look at him. Sebastian’s teeth were in his lip though, marking it with little red lines as he breathed, unmoving. 

Stefano didn’t know what to do. He wanted Sebastian to touch him. He wanted Sebastian to do much more than touch him. He’d been so used to just taking what he wanted, flesh and bone and lives, but then there was Sebastian and he’d tried to take that from him and failed. He had laid there, on the floor of his gallery, bleeding out, and Sebastian hadn’t killed him, hadn’t put him out of his misery, but had asked him questions and wiped the blood from his face and, when Stefano had broken down, from the pain and the frustration and the unexpected care that Sebastian showed him, Sebastian had wiped the tears away too. He didn’t look at Stefano with resentment then, or pity, or any of the other harsh things that the world at looked at him, at his art, with. He’d asked Stefano to join him. Stefano had said yes. 

He thought that he was just going to be used for information and his skill. To help Sebastian find Lily. To help Sebastian kill Theodore. He hadn’t expected him to carry him to a safe room and patch up his wounds, speak to him as a friend, to promise such impossible things like them to both leave this place. 

“Sebastian,” he murmured, putting one of his hands on Sebastian’s jaw, feeling the heat through the stubble. It would be so easy for him to lean forward, to kiss him. This had been the first bed they’d found in a safe room, and it was just a fold out one at that, but the fact that they were sharing it was something that Stefano had never imagined. He hadn’t shared a bed with someone since, well, since Emily, and she didn’t stir these things inside of him like Sebastian did. “Sebastian, you’re the first person to touch me like this in a very long time. It feels pleasant, not just because of the touch but because of who it is who is touching. Feel free to explore.”  
Only one of Sebastian’s hands moved though and it lay flat against his heart. He was aware then, of how fast his heart was beating; how dry his mouth was. “I don’t want to push you,” Sebastian explained, his words slow and calculated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Stefano shifted and the wound in his side didn’t protest more than a slight spasm. It was what had pushed them into the safe room in the first place, the bile from that screeching thing having burned through his side. Sebastian had been so careful in stripping him of his ruined clothes, just leaving him in his briefs, so he could clean and care for the burns. Sebastian was still fully dressed and, for that, Stefano felt he was on the losing side of some battle he didn’t even knew existed. 

“I feel fine,” he promised. “Sleep and coffee seemed to have me all patched up.” He didn’t mention Sebastian’s touch. Even when they were racing to the door, Sebastian’s arm wrapped around Stefano’s back, he could feel the wounds start to stitch back together. When his head had been lolling and his blood was pooling around them in the theatre, he could feel the bullet holes in his chest start to close. There was something magic in Sebastian’s touch. 

“That’s not what I mean,” Sebastian sighed and the blush followed that breath down to his jaw. 

“I see,” Stefano chuckled darkly, running his hand through Sebastian’s hair as he drew a bit closer. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to fuck me-

Sebastian’s hand left his heart and grabbed the back of Stefano’s head, pulling him closer, pressing their foreheads together. Sebastian was shaking, quaking even, as he held Stefano there, his eyes closed as he tried to control himself. Stefano was trapped, held there, and he gulped hard. He felt cornered, suddenly. He had assumed that the fact that they were allies would protect him from that temper of Sebastian’s, but now he wasn’t so sure. He just knew that he was too close and he needed to get away and there was no way out from Sebastian’s touch. 

“Stop,” Sebastian growled, “Just stop saying things like that. I’m not here to use you or your body or whatever else you might think.” The words were harsh and the tone dark and Stefano wriggled slightly, wanting to get away, not wanting to upset Sebastian further. “You are your own man, Stefano. Act like it. Show that you want something for yourself, that comes from your heart. Stop hiding behind this facade that what others do to you has no effect. Tell me what you want, what you really want.”

It barely came out as more than a whimper, so quiet and tense, hysteria buried under a few octaves. “I want you to let me go.”

Sebastian did so, immediately, and Stefano was halfway out from under the bed, having dragged himself to the opposite edge, curling up slightly. No one touched him. No one touched him like that. No one but Emily and Emily was- she was. He kept his mouth shut, his shoulders tensed. He knew that his hair had fallen away from his bad eye but it was covering the rest of his face now and that was good enough. He didn’t want Sebastian to see him, not like this. 

“I’m sorry,” he heard, Sebastian shifted. All of the anger was gone, replaced with that quiet compassion, that terrible care. Part of Stefano wanted to reach out, to grab that care and pull it close. He had reacted so strongly, so strangely. Sebastian hadn’t deserved that. There was so much that Sebastian didn’t deserve. “I’m so sorry, are you alright?”

“Don’t look at me,” Stefano sniffed. 

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian repeated but he had stopped, no longer crossing that distance of the bed. 

They were silent for a moment, waiting for the dam to break but Stefano was good with dams, he was good at controlling floods. He closed his eye and he breathed until the shaking was gone and the emotions were neatly tucked away once more. He sat up, keeping his back to Sebastian, his feet finding the floor. 

“I don’t remember much,” Stefano explained, even though he knew that Sebastian knew about the gaps in his memory, was the one who had told him why they existed, that Mobius had erased what wasn’t needed for him to be able to mesh in with Union. “I don’t know why being grabbed like that elicited such a response, why your and his anger are so terrible to me, why blood and viscera are magnificent and awe inspiring, but bruising and holding are such suffocating disturbia. She, my Emily, was the only one who could hold me close like that, and she never did so in anger.”

A hand reached for him but Sebastian did not touch him. He just lay there in the bed, his arm outstretched, his palm up so Stefano could take it if he wanted. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to explain yourself. I know I need to watch my temper.”

“Am I really so wrong?” Stefano scrunched up, his whole body twisting to get smaller. He didn’t want to do this, he didn’t want to confess these feelings to Sebastian, to anyone. He just wanted to be left alone with these thoughts. He’d held them in for so long. He didn’t need to give them to Sebastian. Sebastian was a strong man, with his heart in the right place, with his priorities set and understood. He wouldn’t understand this weakness that Stefano had. He wouldn’t understand these feelings that were bubbling up, that he wanted to keep held tighter than he ever could be himself. They were escaping his arms though, his hands, his chest, and making themselves known. “Even when I try to please people, it’s wrong or its not enough! And I don’t know why. I don’t know why everything I do for people fails so consistently! My art, it’s supposed to be a way for me to express myself to get the joy of death out onto silver, but it’s all for the masses, all to please them! And the judgment comes down so hard and heavy and it has turned me into a performing beast! In here, I could create, I could make, but I could be so much more, but no, I was a failure at that as well, could do nothing against you, could do nothing for Theodore without making a mess of it. My father said-

He went silent. He couldn’t remember what his father had said. He couldn’t remember his father’s face, or what he did, or anything. He couldn’t remember his mother either. 

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. But it was something hard, something that still lives in me, even though there are no words there anymore. It still affects me and it was true, that was the worst of it. That’s why the fact I can’t remember it is so disparaging.” 

He looked down at Sebastian’s hand, finding it now a fist, anger rippling through it. It was like a grenade and he had to get away from it. He started to twist, to pull away, but then the fist was pulling back, tightening up at Sebastian’s side. He turned to watch it go, expecting it to turn on him, but Sebastian stood up, still fully dressed, and walked away. The tension in him was obvious and Stefano folding over, burying his face in his hands, expecting the yelling to start, perhaps some physical blows. It was fine. It was what he deserved, but somehow, he’d thought that Sebastian would never hurt him again. 

Sebastian leaned against one of the pillars to the building, a fist at his side, the other bent over his head so he could hide his face in the crook over his elbow. He was facing away from the bed, towards the computer. He could go into The Marrow from here, leave Stefano behind to his fate. It was what he deserved after all of this awkwardness, after expelling such terrible feelings, from disappointing Sebastian and pushing him away so. 

“I don’t care what your father told you, I can tell you, right now, that he was wrong,” there was so much anger in Sebastian’s voice, making it raspy and harsh. “Theodore was using you, all the while. He lied to you, twisted what memories you have, in order to make you loyal to him, just as he’s tried to do to me. Those critics? You’ve said it before, they didn’t understand your vision, what you were trying to get across. I don’t understand it either, but shit, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure! You’re not wrong!” That anger, it was so intense that Stefano couldn’t help but flinch from it, even though it was becoming clear that it wasn’t directed at him. “Shit, Stefano, you may not be a saint or anything, you’ve done some really messed up shit, but that doesn’t make you a monster. It doesn’t make anger or pain or any of the other things that have been thrown your way deserved.”

His fist released, clenched, and then relaxed, but the motion looked forced. Sebastian’s entire frame shuddered as he made himself relax, tried to breathe out all of that rage. “I’m sorry. I know I have a temper. It’s probably for the best that you don’t stick around me because of it. I’m not. I’m not mad at you.” 

Stefano was wary, but he was watching him, eye wide. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to believe. Sebastian was saying all sorts of things and, if they were directed at someone else, Stefano was certain that he would believe all of them. They were directed at him though and he knew himself, he knew how much of a disappointment he was. 

“I will make you angry though, I will disappoint you. You may not see it, you may be blind by your sense of justice and your need to save everyone, but I am not a good man. I am not a good person.”

Sebastian turned to him and that blush was gone from his face but it had been replaced by knotted eyebrows and a look of pity, no, no, Stefano fought past that and looked again, a look of sorrow, just for thinking of Stefano, such conviction and compassion that Stefano didn’t know what to do with it. 

He took a few timid steps over, gauging Stefano’s response. He tried not to stiffen, to relax, to let Sebastian into his space. Sebastian knelt down, on his knees, before Stefano, looking up at him. Stefano could see how red Sebastian’s eyes had become, how wet. It almost made him want to laugh. It was impossible, that someone so wholesome would stifle tears for someone as pathetic as Stefano Valentini. 

“You keep saying that, you’re bound to think it’s true,” Sebastian explained and all of the anger was gone from him. His hands were twitching, fingers needed to touch, to soothe. Stefano wanted them on him once more, but he couldn’t ask for that. He didn’t know how he’d respond to it. “I know I need to work on my anger. I know that. Would you give me another chance? Let me try?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Stefano asked, feeling terribly drained all of a sudden. “I am in your debt, not the other way around.”

Sebastian shook his head, “No, no, Stefano. You owe me nothing.”

“I stole your daughter.”

“I almost killed you.”

Stefano sighed, a long exhale, trying to clear his lungs of all the stale air he held. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Just stay with me? A little longer. I don’t want to scare you, not with my anger problems, not with anything. I want you to feel safe.”

Stefano cocked his head, studying his features. “This sounds like the beginning of some kind of deal.”

Sebastian gave him a small smile and he could feel his heart melt a little at that. Sebastian’s eyes were so soft, so kind, most of the time, and, paired with that small smile, there was no way that Stefano wouldn’t at least try. 

“Just, be a little bit nicer to yourself, would you?” Sebastian held his hand over Stefano’s knee for a moment and, when he didn’t flinch or move away, let it settle there, warm against his bare flesh. “Try to ignore what everyone else told you about yourself, remember how you think of yourself instead, and pull that through.”

What he thought of himself was pretty much the same as what everyone else had said about him, but he thought he knew what Sebastian meant. That power, self confidence, pride, that he’d shown when they first met, that showed how much he could care for himself, how much better he was than anyone else that had come before. 

He lifted Sebastian’s hand and placed it on his uncovered cheek, wallowing in the heat of it. He wasn’t a failure, not to Sebastian, and he wasn’t a broken mess either, just a little damaged. He could heal. He wanted to heal. He didn’t remember when the cracks had first started. “I’ll try mio caro.”

Sebastian laughed, the sound gruff but undemanding, “I don’t know what that means but, the sooner you stop listening to them, the sooner you’ll start listening to you.” 

He brushed his lips against Stefano’s forehead, bringing warmth there as well, a warmth that spread down through Stefano’s chest, down towards his heart.


End file.
